Things
A road sign in St Ives (south west England)
“Day visitors ignore your satnav and follow road signs”

Austria would out catholic the Italians any day. Here in Salzburg there are more churches than anywhere we’ve been. In the old town they even seem to make up the majority of buildings.

Have I mentioned this? In public toilets in UK & Switzerland hand dryers blow with force and actually dry your hands. Not always so in Austria, its back to limpid useless.

Flushing is an experience too, from any variety of press buttons to foot pedals.

UK public toilets usually pretty clean, Switzerland usually spotless, Austria, they try hard, Italy, Vatican, free and spotless, elsewhere ordinary to downright cesspool. Sorry about the toilet humour!

Salzburg -
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/irenewheatley/Salzburg?feat=directlink

After only one stop at a service station, we almost expertly navigated our way to the Hotel. Many road works and closures didn’t trip us up but we did stop once and luckily there on the other side of the road, was a city road map! So we were near and on track. We took a walk into town after checking in, to stretch our legs and ended up walking into the old town. Found the Information Centre, got our bearings and even bought a 24hour “city card” which would entitle us to public transport and entry to places of interest. Salzburg is a beaut old city with a car free shopping strip on our side of the river, as well as the old town. Lots of Mozart references of course and lots of chocolate shops specialising in Mozart Kugeln (Mozart marbles - chocolate balls with praline centres).

Early (for us) Thursday morning we headed into town for the bus ride out the other side of town to Hellbrunn Palace. Built 1612-1619 by the Duke (and Archbishop) Markus Sittikus of Salzburg as a fantasy and fun Palace purely for his pleasure. Doesn’t look as though anything holy went on there. There were numerous trick fountains installed. One, part of an outdoor dining setting where the AB encouraged his guests to eat and drink to excess then they would have to put their hands on the table while the AB set off fountains which drenched everyone but him. They would have to sit until the AB was done and left his seat! There were numerous other fountains and lots of interesting nooks and crannies. We enjoyed our guided tour and had a lot of laughs and all of the people on the tour got sprayed at least once. Lucky that the weather was being kind to us this morning. Back into town, to a nice typical Austrian restaurant for lunch then in the afternoon up the funicular train up to the castle which dominates Salzburg, for a slow walk around this immense structure. This castle is a whole city in the sky and it took us longer than expected to do our walk. Eventually we came back down and the exit took us through a bit of history from the origins of the salt trade, the river trade and the AMBER trade. Oops, bad move taking me through Europe’s larges amber sales room. I don’t know how I managed, Howard was no help, but I got out without buying a single jewellery item. We were tired now so pointed our feet in the direction of home and headed back across the river.

Today was an easy one with a slow start, card writing, emailing for Howard and then with a packed lunch we walked into town. First stop, the post office to send a pack of Swiss biscuits we’ve been carrying around since Zeiningen, to a friend in Fremantle. No boxes small enough to fit, so a quick walk to a newspaper stand and we had packing paper. Then no address! Oh hell, I’d asked reception to print out a map to our next hotel address and they’d kept the page (with our information), so a quick walk for Howard while I stood looking stupid in the post office, but at least I managed to get all the paperwork done by the time Howard returned and minutes later with the aid of the very helpful staff we were out of there. Lots and lots and lots of steps behind the shops, straight up to Kapuzinerberg which walls in the city on this side of the river. We had a fabulous walk, the sun was shining and everything was right with the world. We have and early start tomorrow morning for the 600km odd drive to Luxemburg. See you there!

I can finally see that there may be time to write up our Swiss holiday in the next few days.